I read through your report form your link. I grew up in Cashmere and have ridden all around there, but have never really gone East, since I didn't have a dual-sport until after leaving. It was nice to see home. I'm sure I've ridden buy where your cabbin is now many times about 20 years ago.

I now live in Portland and am planning to run a section of the ODBR with some friends this year. Your ride only made me more excited.

I've decided not to take the SLR, but am thinking of how to bring the iPad.

I'd love to hear your retrospective on what you took and what you planned for.

Well I haven’t posted many times on here, I’ve been a lurker mostly. So, here’s some background on me and my take on this trip. For quite a few years, my friend Gavin and I have talked about doing a trip like this, ever since we came across Tom Meyers and his company ‘CycoActive’. He would take these multi day rides from Seattle across the Cascades on his XR400. Like this: http://www.cycoactive.com/Adventure/...thief-500-1998

We both had dual sports at the same time while in college, (XL600s) but our riding back then was pretty much limited to the Moscow / Pullman area. We both rode to school each day on them, Gavin to WSU, me to U of I, then occasionally we’d ride all over Moscow Mountiain. Here was mine:

After college, the heavy and difficult to start XLs were passed on. Gavin sold his, and I traded mine for a KDX, and my riding pretty much was stuff like this for the next several years.

And this....

But, that thought of the dual sport adventure ride was always there. Here was the picture in both our minds (stolen from Tom’s website of course. Thanks Tom for the inspiration!):

Dinty Moore on the fire in the middle of nowhere. Although it seems simple enough, the Dinty Moore remains a goal since the winds of the Columbia basin prevented us from the experience. I hope the coyotes enjoyed it though.

OK, so how in the heck to carry the stuff I needed on my dirt bike? And, what should I be taking? I know it seems obvious. After much reading on here and elsewhere, the answer for me was to be found at Giant Loop. I purchased the Coyote with dry bag, plus, they had a great deal on the 2012 model from the clearance rack although it was white, not orange. Then after 100000000 trips to the REI in Spokane and various other sporting goods stores spending $????? (I don’t want to know) on stuff I ultimately would not take, here’s the finished product. (all loaded up - 2004 400exc with BD dual sport kit, EE seat, Clark tank, 14/48 gearing, grip warmers and Elephant Ears)I wound up following a lot of Dave’s off road adventure touring packing list found at the bottom of this page.(Daves List)

I found that a Marmot Trestles 0 bag will not fit in either the coyote (at least with all the stuff I thought I needed in there too) or the drybag. So, it’s in its own dry bag strapped down to the top. Fortunately it’s fairly light. For summer riding, I may purchase a lighter bag. I also may purchase the Giant Loop Great Basin dry bag to use instead on the back of the coyote if I can fit the sleeping bag in it. Those are stinkin tough dry bags.

Here’s how I wound up packing up.

Main Coyote bag:

The coyote comes with three stuff sacks for the left and right leg and the top, which made things pretty easy. Just stuff the stuff sacks, then drop the stuff sacks down in there. In one leg I dumped all the smaller camping stuff (stove and fuel, water filter, cooking kit, fire starting stuff, ect, plus all the coghlands crap I didn’t actually use). In the top sack, I put all the food I brought. Nothing like stopping wherever and actually having food to eat. In the other leg, I put a fuel bottle with engine oil in it (wound up not helping me much), my Exped SynMat 7 pad, and my tent.

Coyote Dry Bag:

A ton of clothes, most of which I didn’t need. Another lesson learned. I mean, I filled the bag with clothes. I'm not sure why I did that. I had this urge to for some reason.

Added dry bag:

Sleeping bag strapped to the top with my rain gear stuffed in there also. Made it look top heavy, but wasn’t too bad. Just fluffy stuff up there.

Blue rolled up tarp:

The blue thing behind the yellow bag was a home made tarp shelter. I made it for where we had been planning on riding the Olympic Peninsula instead. It just wound up flapping around in the wind at night, so down it came. In the middle of the night. It sucks bringing something you wind up not using, cause then you have to lug it around the rest of the trip.

I essentially got on Google Maps and browsed around looking for cool looking deserty areas to try and ride through. Here was my first attempt...
Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Well, that turned out to be a lot more than we could actually do. My friend Tony (hayshaker) gave us a bunch of suggestions on where we should try and go. In the end though, we had to just go and what happens happens. Not to mention that the last leg there up the west side of the river is Red Dot, as has been discussed in related threads. Bummer though, since it looks fun.

First a stop at Gavin’s newly purchased cabin to check that out. This place would be great place to trail ride from, it's a little ways up in the hills south of Cashmere.

Next was up toward and over Badger Mountain out of Wenatchee. We headed up into the hills on Blue Grade rd just north of the hwy97 / hwy 2 intersection going into East Wenatchee. On the map, it looks pretty straight forward, but the reality was gates and an absolute maze of roads going every which way. We successfully navigated that area and intersected with Badger Mountain rd (although not without backtracking dozens of times and ending up on the wrong side of a closed gate and no tresspassing sign).

Looking back down toward Wenatchee at the bridge we had just crossed.

Had to go that way to get to Badger Mt. rd.

Looking north up the river toward Entiat

Rocky Reach Dam

Looking back down toward Wenatchescratch. I mean Wenatchee. Once we reached Badger Mt. Rd.

The top of Badger Mountain. The roads turns from asphalt to dirt here. On our way back over this thing, there were dozens of sport bikes wizzing up and back down this thing turning around at the dirt. The paved side really would be a great sport bike ride.

Down the other side right above Waterville.

A very different view than the Wenatchee side.

What have we here? A ski lift on some dude’s farm? Cool! Don't know if it's still used or not.

Right after this though, we ran into the first of the few issues we had. All my fault. Installed the stupid gasket wrong. Moron.

I do need a skid plate, I know I don’t have one. It’s on my list, it really is. I’m just used to a KDX with a well designed frame that protects the engine. Well, due to a damaged side cover from dropping it going over a log, and a botched side cover replacement, the engine started leaking out its oil. Probably around the time I was going through Wenatchee. Gavin wanted to stop in Waterville to buy food. Good thing too, or my engine would have been toast with only 80 hours on it. The reason for the leak was a gasket that was ‘pooching’ out the bottom. That’s a technical term. Someone suggested that I spray the gasket with copper coat, which I did. A lot. Stretched the gasket out and it no longer fit. I didn’t notice this though, and while I ran the bike at home some before the trip, it wasn’t leaking any oil. But, here we are just the same. (reposting)

Scraping the old gasket off

Joe (owner of the Napa store) was a life saver. I’ll probably stop in there again the next time I go through Waterville, WA. You should too. His customer base is pretty small. As Gavin mentioned, he wasn’t even open! A friendly farmer we met at the Market around the corner called him for us and asked him to come down.

Well, we got it put back together with Amsoil motorcycle oil he didn’t even know he had on the shelf, and we were off in the dark. We headed toward Jamison Lake to camp, and here’s what we woke up to.

The white jug is water. Unless we mixed up the red one with the white one. It was surprising how easy it was to start a fire with that sage brush.

Moments after this picture was taken, the kickstand bolt broke. I never sit on the bike with the kickstand down, so I thought I could avoid the common KTM broken kickstand, but the additional weight of the gear must have been too much for it.

Oh well, I’ll just find places to lean it against. We decided here that since we didn’t get fuel in Waterville the night before, we need to head toward Coulee City to fill up. So, we decided not to continue further north, although we probably would have encountered better riding had we gone north. Off to Coulee City for fuel.

Dry Falls is right over there.

Selecting the right table at the diner is easy for Gavin. Which ever one has an available outlet for all the necessary appliances.

Here, we scoped out Google Maps once again to determine our exact route south toward Moses Lake.

Originally, the plan was to continue north from Jamison Lake to Grimes Lake, then east over to Banks Lake and follow the cliff road up to the power lines, then follow the power lines up and around toward Grand Coulee Dam. We would then have headed back south on the east side of Banks lake. Like this kinda sorta…

I wish we would have had time to go that way, I still think it would be a good ride.

Instead, we took Pinto Ridge Rd. South to Hwy 28, then Stratford Rd south to Moses Lake. I thought these roads would be gravel, but no such luck. So unfortunately, we spent pretty much the whole day on pavement. I'm starting to notice what sounds like cam chain noise much more than I have before on this bike. Maybe I have some damage from the oil starvation of the day before??? It seems to show up at speeds around 40 mph and up, right as I open the throttle a little bit, then the noise kinda goes away as I turn the throttle on a little more.

Once in Moses Lake, our plan was to head south through the dunes on what Google showed as Yellow Sign rd, which would have taken us to Hwy 262 on the south side of Potholes Reservoir. Thusly, so forth, as follows, ect, ect ect…

But Gavin wasn’t too keen on riding his extremely top heavy bike through sand, and I don’t blame him. Here is what we were riding through (from gavin's pics)....

I also think with the right smartly packed bike, this wouldn't be bad. Someday, I’ll take a bike back to the Moses Dunes and see if it's actually possible to connect all the way through. We made a few attempts at bypassing the Dunes to continue down through the Potholes,

but always ended at a government closed road. “No unauthorized vehicles beyond this point” became the theme of the afternoon. Always beautiful two track beyond those signs disappearing over the horizon open only to the government elite.

The day pretty much petered out with an attempt to camp south west of Moses Lake (gavin's pic) but bailing due to some insane wind driving us back to Moses Lake for a hotel waving the white flag.

This night riding pic from Gavin's go pro is just sooooo stinkin cool!

This was Sunday, our last day of riding. Gavin wanted to get back to the pickups by 4 – 5 pm. So, after a good nights sleep and the ‘breakfast’ the hotel offers, we sat around the Toughbook and planned a new route that will get us back to Cashmere the most interesting way possible. Man did we hit the jackpot!!!! This last day of riding would totally redeem the day before. The plan was to proceed north out of Moses Lake on the west side of the lake. So, we jumped on I-90, and took the exist at Blue Heron park, and headed north on Westshore Drive. Then took Rd 3 west a ways and then Hiawatha Rd north

until we reached this…..

There was a sign on the wire gate that said “Please Close Gate”. Score!!!!!

I can’t even tell you how refreshing this was after yesterdays “Government Land KEEP OUT!!!!” signs that seemed to be everywhere. If you look real close in that picture there, you’ll see a blue ridge on the horizon. That’s where Ephrata is, our next destination.

It was along here that Gavin tried to climb that hill (seen here on his blog site) and discovered why the Space Needle in Seattle has more mass under ground than above it. We both got great Go Pro footage of this whole section….

Gavin, can you get this on Youtube soon???

I didn’t take any pictures from that gate until Ephrata due to the uncontrollable excitement of twisting the throttle across vast expanses of desert. That’s why we need the Go Pro footage!!!

The irrigation canal going through Ephrata

I tell you, it only got better from here on out.

Next we headed out of here up toward the Palisades. I'll show you how we did that.

Hi all. Sorry to intrude. I am wanting to progress in the manor of power and delivery but for this journey it would be best if I had some extra balls. I am wanting to explore the Washington back country discovery route and my little XR250l will not cut the task. I stand short at 5.5 w/ a 30 inch inseam I like the the DR650, would you folks help turn me on to a bike for me and the trail ahead? Any thought on the best application for the Price? Your experience is of high value to my attempt.